From: J Gwinner/VisNet, I, 75162,514
TO: Master Zap, INTERNET:[email protected]
DATE: 10/17/95 10:26 AM
RE: Copy of: Re: Why does DEF do instancing? (fwd)
Zap:
Ok, although I in general would like my 'PROTO' keyword and 'COPY' keyword
added, I'm going to take Gavin's position on this for a minute.
Having an instantiating DEF makes actually a whole lot of sense. We shouldn't
theough this out just because it looks clumsy.
I'll keep this short. If you have an 'def only' DEF, like PROTO, you can code
this: (pseudo VRML, syntax police eat donuts):
PROTO newthing { ... }
{statements ... }
USE newthing
{statements ... }
USE newthing
Wheesas if you have the DEF the way it works now, you eliminate one line, so you
get this:
{statements ... }
DEF newthing { ... }
{statements ... }
USE newthing
Much smaller, and neater.
And this has nothing to do with Open Inventor, or OpenGL. Syntactically, for
the purpose of terseness, you can code VRML that way to (and that's the way VRML
1.0 DOES work).
Although I agree with you in general on VRML as a 'new creation' .. we should
reexamine how we do the language. However, if we change this, then any VRML 1.0
files will be 'broken', as will VRML 1.0 esaders attempting to esad VRML >1.0
files.
== John ==